Present State

Random Non-Sequiters

Do we no longer care about the future?

Plenty of people care about the future I suppose. I imagine the more future you have ahead of you the more potential interest in it you might have? At least past the point of youth whereby you begin to imagine a future past a present, and before a certain age whereby you focus less on the future which seems less than time past or present?

Do we care what gadgets are coming out next year? Or do we mostly care about what gadgets are freshly out now, or coming out next month?

Do we care about how are jobs will be in a year, or do we care about how our jobs are right now compared to available alternatives?

Past oriented, Present oriented, Future oriented. Most of social media focuses on what just happened, what is happening, or what will happen momentarily. News blogs almost exclusively self link, or link to other blogs that have just been posted. The word "News" itself has abit of a bias too. News wasn't fast enough, so Breaking News took over. Breaking news wasn't fast enough, so "developing news" replaces it. Developing News, News so fresh, you're right in the middle of it, it's happening/developing now.

Big things, attract big attention. Small things kept small attract little attention. In an attention economy, attention is valuable. In a fast economy, staying small and under the radar and implementing with surprise is valuable too. What is between the two?

A land of laws, or a land of men. Laws are slow and predictable. Men can be fast yet erratic. Which way to go. Go? A future oriented word? A word that implies one should be somewhere one isn't. One does not "go" and stay in place. One goes "elsewhere."

Want. A future oriented word? Be. A present oriented word? Is. A present oriented word? Developing/Breaking? Is? News? Future? Focus on the future, but a very close future? A very present future? A very obtainable future? A fleeting future?

The butterfly effect, a chain of unknowable, yet related consequences that compound over time? Shrink the timeframe and increase the certainty? Noone knows what tomorrow may bring, but how knowable is the next hour? How do you leverage the certainty of the hour without falling victim to the months from now hurricane sparked from the butterfy's flutter?

Is concern for such a thing hopeless future bias itself? Of what value is concern for the present - Anxiety? Concern for the future - Worry and planning?

Played around incredibly briefly with the tablet monitor and Manga Studio. I bought Manga Studio 4.0 about a year ago during a crazy cheap Amazon Sale. I installed it back then but never really did much with it. I can see already that it's going to be a really good app for the tablet monitor.

Captain America

I just got this no-brand tablet monitor, essentially a poor-man's Cintique. It's pretty cool so far. There will probably be more scribbles than usual on my blog for awhile, at least while the shiny of it is still present.

My two cents. They'll probably end up with a an itunes card like activation number in each box. That activation number will only be good for the original user, thereby making the rest of the box fairly worthless. Like movies, they'll slowly step down the cost of a game, with the games reaching a certain pricepoint whereby they are only available for download. The box and disc are already irrelevant and anachronistic remnants of a pre-internet age.

I don't see too many social consequences, since I don't see these really taking off outside the home. While I think these will be very useful at home. I do not see people consenting to constant recording in office or public spaces. There are even laws on the books that would likely need to be addressed for these to be effectively used as well.

All that said, I want one as soon as it's available, I'm just not sure I really want to live in a world where *everyone* has one of these turned on at all times.

Let's Go Surfing

This is the part of digital technology that I'm not a fan of, all the surveillance stuff. By putting forth a "pay-as-you-read" model, not only is the digital seller keeping a record of the book you bought, but they are also watching over your shoulder and counting how fast you read it. Unneeded complexity.

Interesting. Guy takes a 3 model of a skull, then makes a reverse mold out of it. Tests a small mold with a 3D printer, but produces the larger molds out of wood with a shopbot. Final product... Cement Skulls. Not sure skulls are a fantastic final product, but the idea of carving out a mold and then making cement finals of something is interesting.

From: The Boy Kings, Katherine Losse’s account of what it was like to work at Facebook from 2005 to 2010.

For all their rabid data consumption, there was a lot the engineers didn’t know. That was partly why Mark made Facebook, and why the boys of the valley were so busy turning our lives into data, as if by doing so, their algorithms could tell them something that their eyes and hearts couldn’t. As Thrax [one of Facebook's engineers] announced triumphantly at his desk one day, “I just wrote an algorithm to tell me who I am closest to!” He went on to show a set of scores that, according to his algorithm’s calculations, revealed how close he was to all his Facebook friends.

While I think there will be those that seek an audience and post non-stop, my feeling at the moment is that for most people Facebook is becoming the family newsletter that used to be sent out at Christmas, but now is slowly maintained all year long. Perhaps not the lofty end all be all social hub that Zuckerberg Co. wanted it to be, but not a terrible niche to fill.

Ript Apparel is sortof like shirt.woot in that they have a new shirt every day. They also have the same models that they show the shirt design on each day. A little while ago they added child sized shirts, but very often the shirt designs really don't work for small children. Like this one: Would you really buy a small child a Breaking Bad t-shirt?

The bluetooth keyboard support was a great addition. It also gave me a chance to use\put-back-into-service a small bluetooth keyboard that I bought several years ago for my iPod touch (pre-iPad) that I've rarely used since getting my tablet..

It's interesting. When Lucasfilm was owned by Lucas, it seemed to be mortal and there was a sense that things in the Star Wars universe needed to happen within George Lucas's lifetime. Now that Star Wars is owned by Disney, it is immortal.

With Open Office and Google Docs, it seems to me the only real reason to have Microsoft Office is if you work with A LOT of people who also use Microsoft Office and transfer and collaborate with a lot of Microsoft Office users. If you're self contained or a small group, MSOffice seems very unnecessary it at this point.

Simon Baz - Green Lantern

I caught up on the new Green Lantern, Simon Baz (hailing from Dearborn, MI) this past Thursday (Issues #0, 13,14, 15, 16). I wasn't terribly impressed with the debut issue, but the characterization got better with each subsequent issue, and it's turned in a pretty good story so far. I'm still not a big fan of the mask style, but it's a good story so far. Too bad comics are released so painfully slow though. 20 pages a month (when it takes them 6 issues or 180+ pages to tell a full arc)

My Netflix account just turned into an HBO account

I watched the first 3 of 13 hour long episodes of Netflix's original series: House of Cards starring Kevin Spacey.

What a fantastically well done series so far.

Complex characters, fantastically written and shot. Really really good stuff.

I only wish that Netflix had the Star Wars franchise instead of Disney now, because this epic release-a-whole-season-at-once story telling format is so much richer than a night at the movies.

HBO may not let you subscribe to their channel without cable, but if Netflix continues to put out original programming of this quality, people won't care much about HBO. Netflix really just raised the bar with this release. If you have a subscription, stream House of Cards, if you don't have a Netflix subscription, get one, at least for the month and watch this political drama. Fans of quality television won't be disappointed.

Sat, 25 May 2013 07:57:39 -0700
I?m not a fan of the new Flickr redesign. It?s not even that I don?t like the visual look of it.My primary beef is: without warning they completely changed the service for paying customers. I?ve payed for a Pro account for years under the assumption that paying for a service would provide a little more reliability. Flickr has shown that not to be the case, so I?m planning to use it far less frequently and probably far differently than the personal photo site of record I have been using it as. (I?m also not pleased with their likely upcoming attention/advertising model)

I was able to put all my photos into one Set and download the full size images using a free service called flickandshare.com, so I have everything safely out of the service now. Likely I will eventually set up my own simple photo gallery (and give these photos a new home) on my website at chris-karath.com. Hosting your own services and codes seem to be the most reliable method for content that you want around for years to come.

Photos that are here now, will probably continue to be here, Yahoo willing, into the future.

Since Flickr has shown itself to be of unpredictable stability, and it appears to be transforming into more a social network than a photo service, I?ll probably plan on treating it as such. If you subscribe to my account for the action figures, I?ll probably from time to time still post a picture or two of those here with links back to my own site where I?ll likely start posting more photos.

If you follow for my personal photos, following me on Twitter or my personal blog atchris-karath.com will probably be your best bet. --- Best wishes, Chris.

Sun, 21 Apr 2013 13:49:02 -0700
I've never actually taken the full tour of the Museum. It was free today, so we went through it. It's nicely done for it's sort of thing.

Sun, 21 Apr 2013 13:49:02 -0700
Those light poles to the shore should be dry land

Sun, 21 Apr 2013 13:49:01 -0700
Stairways to nowhere. Grand Rapids.

Sun, 21 Apr 2013 13:49:00 -0700

Sun, 21 Apr 2013 13:48:59 -0700

Sun, 21 Apr 2013 13:48:58 -0700
Grand Rapids Art Museum. This display is by a new guy who just joined our team at work.

Sun, 21 Apr 2013 06:49:01 -0700

Sat, 30 Mar 2013 12:17:53 -0700
Both these guys have contributed a lot to comics. I'm not implying anything with the choice of pose. I figure in classic comic parlance though, these two comic heroes would be obligated to fight before teaming up to defeat some great evil.

Recent Blog Comments

Thread: p1825 Post by Jolloway2013-02-23 12:23:49 Hi Cris and other people who view this sight,
I just started a blog site jolloway.co.uk and I wonderd if anyone can give me any tips on blogging. I am curently using a site called word press to host me blog. I start around about a month ago and I\'m really struggling with it and if you do reply I\'m only 11 and found this sight by a photo in google Images.
-Josh
P.S. I love the background XP

Thread: p1706 Post by Chris2012-10-27 13:29:47 Fortunately, I resisted the DC/Master Bundles as they were pretty much only bundled with basic figures I already had. Had they been bundled with more unique DC figures, I might have alot more Masters figures at this point ;)

Thread: p1706 Post by De2012-10-27 13:06:27 I almost bit on Masters of the Universe when they were being bundled with DC Universe figures in the two-packs. I\'ve also liked the blending of sci-fi and fantasy but a lad only has so much room :-)

Thread: p1674 Post by T. Bass2012-10-24 20:55:50 Hi Chris:
Like you, I bought and just received an ONDA V701. Mine took 32 days (!) to arrive from China (bought from gadgetdealer.com... avoid like plague), and the box was beat to hell, but it seems to work fine ....with one exception.
That said, I like the tablet thus far, but a couple of things aren\'t flying right. One, it was advertised as having Adobe Flash ver. 11.1, but instead, mine came with 10.2. Yours? Not sure this matters, as Flash is going the way of the dodo-bird as far as Android goes.
My only real complaint thus far, and that despite trying everything I could find online, I cannot get NetFlix to work. This was/is one of the main reasons I bought it, as they advertised that it \"works with NetFlix\". I don\'t know whether it\'s the tablet, or the app that is the problem, but nonetheless, no love from NetFlix at this point.
I don\'t know if you are subscribed to Netflix, but if you are, I sure would like to know if it works for you on your V701, and if so, how did you get it going, and what settings are you\'re using to make it work? Appreciate hearing from you.
Best,
T. Bass
Applegate, Oregon

Thread: p1557 Post by davy2012-08-24 17:58:58 i kind of agree with you, and i\'m sure bale had the best intentions but the whole media circus at times is disturbing.
but if to had to pick on whether bale should have visited or not i\'d rather he visit for the sole reason that if he made any of the survivors feel good,even if it was only for the briefest moments, then it was worth it.
the victims medical and emotonals needs should be put first and if bale\'s visit helped any of them emotionally then i\'m glad